Context

In his Nobel Prize lecture in 2002, Daniel Kahneman spoke about research he had been doing on intuition.  Reading through his speech, one drawing caught my eye:

"Ambiguous stimulus that is perceived as a letter in a context of letters is seen as a number in a context of numbers."

It's interesting how often this seems to occur in everyday life.

For example, I have come to see many objects in the context of spoons.  I look for spoons, I see spoons.  It's nice actually.  I like the discovery, the searching, the wash of sight across the visual world, the flow of touch upon surfaces. 

I was looking at a piece of wood the other day - my neighbor had cut down a tree and he let me work my way through the branches.  He knows about my "spoon-thing" and was amused to watch me step through the piles like a kid on a shoreline looking for seashells.  Treasure.  Messages in bottles.  Ancient pirate medallions.

I eyed one branch.  Sure, I thought.  Yes.  Nothing ambiguous.  It was nice.

Plying

Plying upon surfaces that shift with the winds,
that carry us everywhere and nowhere
as they toy with our sense of solidity,
we create furrows that appear,
and disappear within our lives.
We leave no trace within these spaces,
yet we can carve them
upon presents and futures,
lingerings of moments
that tell upon our time.

Seeing new

It was like I got a whole new perspective on and appreciation for life the other day...

I read about the spoon theory.   It tells of a view of a spoon being like a miracle of a chance to experience life.  When you are healthy, your days are loaded with spoons.  When you're sick, or disabled, the amount of spoons become more and more limited.  And when there are very few spoons possible for use, the choice of the spoon you choose becomes more and more important.

I thought about my aunt Elaine, who had died years back and who had been having to make important spoon sorts of decisions for many years - every day deciding what it was that was essential, important, maybe good and right and just what was the thing to do.

I take up one of my "goofy spoons".  I look at its essence of curves, grains, edges.  I feel its flow in my hands. One of many miracles.  I walk in the forest.  I look in the trees - a limitlessness of potential.  I look in my workroom where there are piles of not-quite-spoons in all stages of process.

How many "spoons" do we let go of, every day, for lack of appreciating their beauty, for lack of acknowledging that we are given these as so many simple gifts?..

Sharpness

It's an incredible act of faith and determination to take a sharp-edged piece of steel into your hands and place that edge into another solid substance with the intention of providing that other substance with a renewed shape. 

In the moment just before the sharp edge meets wood grain, a thousand decisions are made.

It reminds me of that moment in the movie Apollo 13 when they need to determine the precise angle at which they'll slam into the earth's atmosphere.  The slightest error would have caused them to burn to ash.  They would have existed no more.

In the moment just before the sharp edge meets wood grain,a wondrous sense of faith pervades - the unwavering sense of faith in the solidity of both objects.

80 grit

Yesterday had felt like a first day of spring, sunny, warm, snow rumbling off the roofs, and I looked at a pile of tree sections that I had organized within the disorgannized chaos of a space on my porch, and I thought to take up one of them.  The were in all different phases of exploration, some with just the bark taken away, some sawed towards a maximum minimum, some with honed edges.  My thoughts went from the pieces of wood to another pile close-by, of knives and axes, chisels and sandpaper.  Just as each piece of wood has its story, each tool and piece of sandpaper also has its sense of purpose, its essence of personality, and its moment of becoming meaningful within the process that I call searching for spoons.

Take for instance a piece of 80 grit sandpaper.  It can be flattened, curved, bent ripped, folded but ultimately it is just plain rough enough to bite into most woods with an attitude of not so much caring for some distantly imagined smooth sheened surface as setting into a mood of journeying into solidity to bring out some first sense of shape. 

80 grit is the framer who pounds at two-by-eights, fastening them to the open air.  80 grit is the plow-blade that forms a ribboned cleavage of field upon the muddy earth.  80 grit is the mood of the many nights of missed throws at the basketball hoop as a young boy dreams of that first slam-dunk on the big court.  80 grit is the patient silence of a father who shows his child how to use a carving knife for the first time, hands the knofe over and then watches as the child makes that first cut into wood.

Wood, finely carved

There was a recent article about wooden buildings. 

The last paragraph was:  "Wood is also pleasant for both mind and body. It creates an agreeable acoustic and visual environment, evens out the moisture variations in indoor air and, according to studies, even calms pulse rates."

I thought about what will be inside these constructs.  Will there be wooden tables, chairs, lamps, bowls, spoons?  Will these aspects of spacial existence also be taken into account as points of balance within the experience of those moving through the zones established by the placement of everything around?

I would venture to say that a finely carved spoon can calm one's pulse rate.  And I would also venture to say that carving finely also calms one's pulse rate while establishing a sense of balance, acoustic, visual, tactile, temporal...

When I was (1)

When I was hanging by one hand gripping a thorny vine that should never have held my weight, I looked down my armpit into a chasm that seemed to understand that it held my death.  I had been climbing a mountain to go deer hunting, my rifle slung over my shoulder, shell in the chamber, the steepness becoming a cliff, I was going the wrong way up but was too stubborn to turn back.  Something inside me urged me on.  Crazed idiocy disguised as confused determination.  There was no way up.

I had taken hold of the vine to maintain my balance as I tried to look around a corner to search for a next foothold, but all I found was emptiness and I slipped, and slowly swung out over the chasm like being taken through a door that was more outside than inside, opening to a space that invited me with a pleasant carress of an assurance that it would be fast and easy and painless and good and right.  But for some reason the thin vine held me there suspended and somehow I reached out with my toe and caught upon solidity and somehow the ever so slight movement and ever so slight touch of my toe allowed me to swing back.  There had been nothing but calmness, nothing but the knowledge that I would not accept that invitation.  I came back for a reason.

When I place my hand upon the thinnest possible spoon handle that I can create, I remember that moment of suspension.  I remember that invitation.  And I remember that calmness.  That last tiny touch upon that last possible point of contact with the last essence of solidity upon that spoon.  If I let go, it is the spoon that falls.